KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Since Brett Veach began his NFL career in earnest as Andy Reid’s personal assistant in Philadelphia, he’s naturally been steeped in Reid’s ways and means and long shared a wavelength with him.

Simply put, the Chiefs general manager gets Reid and what he’s seeking to do. That keen anticipation and understanding of Reid’s needs and notions is perhaps best illustrated in Veach’s breathless advocacy for drafting Patrick Mahomes in 2017 when Veach was the team’s co-director of player personnel.

Just as understandably, Veach said before the Super Bowl in New Orleans, it took “a year or so” after Steve Spagnuolo was hired as defensive coordinator in 2019 for Veach to apprehend what best conformed to his inclinations and preferences.

Safe to say that synergy has come to flourish between Veach and Spagnuolo, whose defenses have significantly outperformed the Chiefs’ vaunted offense the last two seasons and have been among the NFL’s 10 stingiest units in five of Spagnuolo’s six seasons.

The latest case in point was the 2025 NFL draft.

Three of their top four picks were defensive players checking some prototypical Spagnuolo boxes by being All-Juice sorts with sheer play-making ability: defensive linemen Omarr Norman-Lott (63rd overall) and Ashton Gillotte (66th overall) and cornerback Nohl Williams, last season’s NCAA interception leader (85th overall).

But it was their fifth-round pick, Oregon linebacker Jeffrey Bassa, who perhaps most embodied the thriving connection between Veach and Spagnuolo.

The story isn’t just that the Chiefs traded up to get him, using the fifth-round pick they’d acquired from Philadelphia after a first-round trade and a seventh-round pick to move up eight spots for a prospect they were surprised still was around.

It’s about a key part of the basis for why.

Which goes back to a pre-draft Zoom call coaches and front office members conducted with Bassa — whom they’d scouted for three years.

As he observed the Zoom from a separate room than the coaching staff, Veach recalled, Spagnuolo and other coaches tested Bassa as they do other linebackers on various defensive concepts.

Many are “just spinning,” Veach said, through the quizzing.

Bassa, though, was just “boom, boom, boom,” Veach said.

So much so that Veach couldn’t resist picturing what was happening in the coaching room:

He envisioned Spagnuolo taking off his glasses and putting one of the arms of them in his mouth — one of his tells when he gets excited.

And then he predicted Spagnuolo would momentarily enter the room he was in with other staff members to convey his enthusiasm.

Presto ….

Almost like a “Saturday Night Live” skit, Veach said in a post-draft interview with local writers, Spagnuolo opened the door a few minutes later and gushed over Bassa.

Beyond that, though, the choice of Bassa also reflected another element of appreciation for the essentials of a Spagnuolo defense — which was second in points allowed two seasons ago and fourth a year ago to buoy the Chiefs to Super Bowl berths even as the offense drooped to 15th in points scored each of the last two seasons.

With running back a position of need entering the draft, the Chiefs nonetheless bypassed that (until they took Brashard Smith in the seventh round) for what might have seemed a luxury after they’d re-signed Nick Bolton and with Drue Tranquill and Leo Chenal returning.

But cultivating depth and a prospective future starter is particularly pivotal with a linebacker the Chiefs believe capable of orchestrating Spagnuolo’s complicated and vast schemes — which Veach likens to a Cheesecake Factory menu.

In short, you can never have enough brainiacs to direct traffic as Bolton so crucially does and Tranquill often supplements. (Chenal is the third man up for the green dot of direct communication with the coaches, and reserve Jack Cochrane also has been called into the role.)

“Linebacker is such a different animal” in Spagnuolo’s defense, Veach said, adding, “You almost have to be, like, a chemical engineer for Spags to get excited about someone.”

As it happens, Bassa was a sociology major at Oregon, where he converted from safety and was the green-dot man for several seasons. He was ranked 123rd on Pro Football Focus’ Big Board for the draft and 105th by NFL.com for a variety of reasons.

But beyond the baseline of talents is what resonated most with the Chiefs — a sense of the field enhanced by his past as a d-back and a feel for what to do in the chaos around him that Bassa attributes to endless study of the game.

In a Zoom interview with local reporters moments after he was drafted, Bassa said when he’s not at practice or playing that he’s “always” watching film.

At least from speaking with him upon his arrival in Kansas City for rookie camp, that didn’t seem to be an exaggeration.

“I’m a huge film junkie,” he said, reiterating that sometimes he’s “sitting in the house all day watching film.”

That apparently started spontaneously from sheer love of the game when he was in high school in Kearns, Utah.

He’d get on YouTube and watch NFL defensive breakdowns and coverages and study the various responsibilities in different schemes vs. offensive looks, he said.

The “itch” to learn more, he said, came to include picking the brains of the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks at Oregon to get a more full understanding of what they were trying to do to opposing offenses.

All of this past is a long way from converting that to the NFL.

But it was easy to see through his words how hungry Bassa was to learn in rookie camp:

Heck, he even seemed excited by his mistakes, referring to being at a “good stage” where he can look at film and say, “OK, I was supposed to do this instead of this, right?”

And he relished that Spagnuolo had spent some time correcting him on the field.

“This is our type of player,” Chiefs national scout Jonathan Howard said.

And especially Spagnuolo’s type — further reflecting both his imprint on the franchise and the burgeoning dynamics between him and Veach.

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